For some reason the warrior queen made Omago turn cold all over. There was a savagery just below her surface that was very frightening.
Dahlaine motioned Veltan off to one side, but Omago was close enough to hear their quiet talk.
“Have you told any of these mercenaries about that second invasion that turned up in Ashad’s dream?” Dahlaine asked quietly.
“Not as yet,” Veltan replied. “I can’t for the life of me think of a way to mention it to Narasan without offending him. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to deal with it on my own—or possibly get some help from Zelana. She’s very good at dealing with winds and tides, and she could probably freeze any approaching fleet in place for the next few centuries.”
“I wouldn’t set that in stone, Veltan,” Dahlaine cautioned. “Ashad’s dream definitely put that second invasion ashore in the southern part of your Domain.”
“That doesn’t necessarily lock it in place, Dahlaine,” Veltan disagreed. “Eleria’s dream over in the Land of the Maags supposedly killed Sorgan and all his men, but Longbow stepped in and prevented that dream from taking place right there on the spot. As I understand it, these dreams are sometimes warnings rather than absolute certainties.”
“Well, maybe,” Dahlaine conceded, “but keep your eyes and ears open.”
“This rounded shank fits right over the tip of the spear-shaft, Omago,” the small Maag called Rabbit explained the following day when the two of them were working in Omago’s dooryard. “Then I whack it a few times with my hammer to sort of lock the spear-point in place.”
“That probably would work better than just lashing a knife to the tip of the pole,” Omago conceded. “I was mulling things over last night,” he said, “and something sort of came to me.”
“Another one of those pops of yours?” Rabbit asked with a sly grin.
“Well, sort of. It seemed to me that if a spear had more than one point it might be more effective.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spear with more than one point.”
Omago went into his toolshed and picked up his wooden hay-rake. “We use this tool to clear away the straw after we’ve harvested our wheat,” he said, holding the rake out to Rabbit. “If the points were sticking straight out instead of angling down, wouldn’t that be more effective than just a single point?”
Rabbit squinted, absently tapping his hammer on his anvil. “You might have just come up with something, Omago,” he agreed. “An ordinary spear only has one point, because you’re only trying to kill one enemy at a time, but if you’ve got that venom we used back in the ravine, you could kill three or four snake-men with one poke. Let’s try it and see what the Cap’n and Commander Narasan think about it. If your people are all lined up the way you told us they’d be, that’d put a whole lot of poisoned points out to the front.”
“Who came up with the idea of dipping the points of your war-tools in venom?”
“Longbow—or maybe it was One-Who-Heals—I’m not really sure which one. Longbow’s been killing snake-men since he was just a boy. You wouldn’t believe how good he is with that bow of his.”
“Did he ever tell you just why he hated the snake-men so much?” Omago asked.
“He didn’t, but I was talking with one of the men from his tribe back in Lattash, and he told me that a snake-man killed the girl Longbow was going to marry, and after that, killing snake-men was about the only thing Longbow thought about. Let’s hammer out one of those rake-point spears and see what the Cap’n and Narasan think about it. If it works even half as good as it seems to me that it will, I think they’ll really like the idea. Every time you turn around, you seem to come up with a new idea.”
Omago smiled faintly. “It’s probably because I’m just a bit lazy, Rabbit. Maybe someday I’ll come up with a tool that’ll do all my work for me. Then I’ll be able to stay in bed until noon.”
“Now that’s the tool I’ve been looking for since the first day when I had to go to work,” Rabbit said with a broad grin.
Keselo turned the large metal shield over and showed Omago the back of it. “You have to slide your left arm under this leather strap and take a firm grip on the bar. That makes the shield a sort of extension of your arm, and you can block the strokes of your enemy’s sword or the jabs he makes at you if he’s using a spear. The creatures we came up against in the ravine didn’t have any weapons except their fangs and stingers, but the shields held them back far enough so that they couldn’t reach us. I talked this over with Rabbit earlier this morning, and he agreed with me that wooden shields would work as well as metal ones, since the snake-men don’t have swords or axes. We wouldn’t be able to gather up enough metal to make shields for all of your men anyway, and wood’s lighter and easier to carry than iron or bronze.”
“And if the shield was made of wood, Rabbit could probably attach a spear-point to the middle of it, couldn’t he?” Omago suggested.
Keselo blinked. “I never thought of that!” he exclaimed. “How in the world did you come up with that notion, Omago?”
“The two things just sort of connected,” Omago replied. “I wasn’t trying to make a joke of it or anything like that, but if there’s a spear-point that’s been dipped in that venom, you’d have something to protect yourself with if one of the snake-men happens to duck under the spear-points lined up out in front.”
“You’re an absolute genius, Omago!”
“I wouldn’t go that far, Keselo,” Omago replied, feeling slightly embarrassed by the young Trogite’s enthusiasm. “As I see it, this phalanx thing your commander mentioned is going to take quite a bit of practice to get used to.”
Keselo nodded. “Several weeks at least,” he agreed. “Now, when we take up the phalanx formation we overlap our shields to put a solid wall to the front. Then we tuck the butt of the spear under out right armpit and take hold of the shaft with our right hand. You have to hold the shield bar tightly with your left hand and the shaft of your spear just as tight with your right. The muscles in both your arms will be a little sore by the end of the day at first, but that’ll go away after a while. The secret of the whole thing is that your soldiers aren’t working as individuals. They’re a unit, and they’re very closely coordinated. When you use the phalanx formation, your men have to lock their spears in place and then walk forward in unison. They walk the spear-point into the enemy instead of jabbing or poking.”
“That might take a bit of getting used to,” Omago said a bit dubiously.
“Yes, it does. We’ll start by teaching your men to march. That involves walking in unison. We want everybody’s left foot to come down on the ground at the same time. After a while, it gets to be second nature, and they’ll be able to do it in their sleep—well, almost.”
“Being a soldier’s a little more complicated than I thought it might be,” Omago observed.
“It beats doing honest work,” Keselo replied with a slight grin.
“My ships are a lot faster than yours, Narasan,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said that evening at the supper table. “I’ll be able to bring Lady Zelana’s archers here in about half the time it’d take those scows of yours.”
“And only bring back half as many,” Narasan added dryly. “We could probably argue all night about which would be better—fast or many.”
“You’ve got a very warped sense of humor, Narasan.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” Narasan replied blandly.
“Just exactly where’s the border-line between your Domain and Zelana’s, Veltan?” Longbow asked.
“I don’t know if I’d call it a line, exactly,” Veltan replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Most archers are hunters, and hunters can run quite a bit faster than people who spend their time sitting in one place. Any ship—either Sorgan’s or Narasan’s—will have to take the long way around to get back to Lattash. The archers could come across country, though, and if I remember your lumpy picture correctly, a straight line from Lattash to your house here would
be less than half as far as a ship would have to travel.” He looked at Sorgan with a faint smile. “We could race, if you’d like, and maybe even make some kind of wager on it.”
“I think I’ll put my money on Longbow, Sorgan,” Narasan declared.
“Not against me, you won’t,” Sorgan said sourly. “The main thing I’ve learned about Longbow is never to try to beat him—at anything.”
The following morning a balding Trogite named Gunda came up from the beach to confer with Commander Narasan. “I had a clerk draw a copy of my map for Andar,” he reported, “and he’ll bring the rest of the army on up through that channel through the ice. Then I bought a sloop so that I could come up here and find out exactly where we want the army to come ashore. Then I’ll go on back down to the upper end of the channel and lead Andar on up here.”
“How long is it likely to take, Gunda?” Narasan asked.
“Probably about another two weeks. Have things started to heat up here yet?”
“Not as far as we know,” Narasan replied. “Of course, when you’re dealing with those snake-men, you can never be sure. Why didn’t you bring Padan up here with you?”
“Well, he’s just a little bit nervous, Commander,” Gunda replied. “When he gets here, he’s going to have to report a couple of things that aren’t going to make you any too happy.”
“Such as?”
“Could I take that as an order, sir?” Gunda asked. “I wouldn’t want Padan to start calling me a snitch.”
“Consider it to be an order then, Gunda. What’s been going on down there at the beach?”
“Well, sir, when Padan woke up yesterday morning, he noticed right off that Veltan’s sloop wasn’t there anymore.”
“You said what?” Veltan demanded.
“It’s gone,” Gunda replied, “but this gets even better. Padan told me that Commander Narasan had stripped Jalkan of his commission and had him put in chains. After a while, Padan put a couple of things together and he ran down to the little room in the hold of the ship where Jalkan had been chained to the wall—and guess what? Jalkan wasn’t there anymore either. I suppose it might just be a coincidence that the sloop and Jalkan both vanished on the same night, but I don’t think I’d want to wager a month’s pay on it.”
“Are you just about through joking around, Gunda?” Narasan demanded.
“I was just reporting what had happened, sir. If I remember correctly, you did order me to tell you about this, and a good soldier always obeys orders.” He feigned a look of wide-eyed innocence.
And then he burst out laughing.
Upon reflection, Omago realized that the outlanders were quite a bit more advanced than the people of the Land of Dhrall, but their social structure left much to be desired. They were very much like children—except that they all carried deadly weapons, and they’d go to war on almost any pretext.
That childish aggressiveness did work to the advantage of the people of the Land of Dhrall, though. The current situation required many hired killers, and it appeared that Veltan and his sister had found exactly the ones best qualified to meet the servants of the Vlagh.
Omago smiled faintly. The outlanders had all appeared to be astonished by several of the innovations he’d suggested. Evidently they all had the notion of “primitive savages” locked in stone in their minds. The possibility that anybody in the Land of Dhrall could come up with improvements in weaponry was beyond their comprehension.
To some degree, perhaps, that blank spot in the minds of the outlanders could have grown out of their lack of awareness of—or interest in—the extensive education Omago had received from Veltan since his early childhood. He was fairly sure that no outlander from the Trogite Empire or the Land of Maag had ever had a god for his teacher. The “connections” which had come to Omago had been second nature, actually. Omago habitually moved from “effect” to “cause,” and that seemed to be unnatural for the outlanders. They always seemed to think in the opposite direction. Evidently it had never occurred to them that the source of most inventions was “I need something that will do that,” not “I wonder what I’ll be able to do with this thing if I make it.”
Omago was forced to concede that he had made a serious blunder, however. Jalkan’s insult had been a perfect opportunity to eliminate what might well turn out to be a serious danger down the line. “I should have killed him right there on the spot,” Omago muttered regretfully. “Narasan even went so far as to offer me the opportunity, and I passed it up—probably because I didn’t want to offend the Trogites. I’m almost certain that we haven’t seen the last of that foul-mouthed lecher.”
Then a peculiar notion came to him. Could it be that Ara had deliberately instilled that lust in Jalkan? Omago was almost positive that she could have done that. She’d certainly done it to him when they’d first met in his orchard. Just the sight of her had made him her captive. If she had, in fact, set Jalkan’s mind to moving in that direction, it was quite obvious what she’d been after. Omago cursed himself. He’d failed her. She’d almost certainly have wanted him to respond in the most primitive way—bashing Jalkan’s brains out or ripping him up the middle with that iron knife.
“If that’s what she really wanted, I wish she’d told me what she had in mind.” He shrugged. “Ah, well,” he sighed. “Maybe next time.”
THE BETRAYAL
1
Jalkan of Kaldacin was the sole remaining member of a once-prominent family of the Trogite Empire. Many of his ancestors had served with honor and distinction in the Palvanum, and others had been advisors to historically significant emperors. The family had accumulated wealth, prestige, and power over the years, and the names of several members were prominently displayed on various public monuments.
In the past century, however, Jalkan’s family had gone into a steep decline. Various ne’er-do-wells had squandered away the family’s wealth in wanton debauchery, gambling, and drinking to excess. Moneylenders pursued them, and a fair number of Jalkan’s recent ancestors had spent their final years in assorted debtors’ prisons.
By the time Jalkan himself reached maturity, the family’s reputation had been irrevocably tarnished, and there were very few career opportunities available to him.
He considered the possibility of joining the ranks of the assorted Trogite syndicates that were currently amassing vast fortunes in the Land of Shaan. The notion of swindling ignorant savages out of their gold had a certain appeal, but he quickly discarded that idea when word of a colossal disaster reached Kaldacin. Evidently some idiot, far gone in drink, had boasted about his success in the wrong place and in front of the wrong people, and the natives of the Land of Shaan had gone on a rampage, slaughtering (and feasting on) every Trogite they could lay their hands on.
Jalkan, now facing the prospect of hard, honest work for scant pay, turned instead to the last refuge of the scoundrel. Dressed in his most sober clothing and wearing a somberly pious expression, he began to attend holy services in the local Amarite convenium three or four times a day.
In due time, one of the minor Hieras in the hallowed convenium noticed Jalkan and brought him to the attention of the Oran as a potential member of the clergy. The Oran interviewed Jalkan and enrolled him as a novice, demanding scarcely more than a third of Jalkan’s very limited remaining assets as a sign of good faith.
Jalkan winced, but finally agreed.
His first few months as a very junior member of the clergy were moderately unpleasant, since the Amarite hierarchy devoted much effort to weeding out apprentices who were excessively unworthy. Jalkan was clever enough not to steal too much and to discredit those of his fellow novices who were overly honest or obviously more clever than he was.
His cunning was noted by his superiors, and it generally met with their approval.
Jalkan’s most immediate goal as a novice had been to take the next step up to the rank of Hiera. A Hiera in the Amarite faith was not required to do much hard labor, and he was even assigned his own room
. The rooms of the Hieras were called “cells,” and they were very tiny, but they were far better than the rank-smelling first-floor dormitories where the novices were crammed together like cattle.
Because he was marginally literate, Jalkan’s duties as a Hiera were largely limited to administration, and he was somewhat startled to discover that nearly half of the Empire belonged to the Amarite church. The vast church estates produced much of the Empire’s food—for a handsome price—and the annual rent on various buildings in the capital city of Kaldacin brought in staggering amounts of money.
It was on a gloomy afternoon in late winter that Jalkan came across an ancient document that gave an account of the closing of a run-down convenium in one of the poorer districts of the imperial city of Kaldacin. If the time-faded document was correct, the structure had been closed for nearly a century, and the financial records of the church showed that it had not brought in so much as a single copper penny in all those years. If that were indeed the case, Jalkan realized that he could very well be the only man in the world who even knew of the existence of the building.
The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers Page 9